That Fatal August Night of 1968

This event definitely belongs to one of the saddest in the Czechoslovak history. This year it has been 40 years since that terrible moment when Czechoslovakia was invaded by its allies – GDR, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the USSR. A vast number of the troops were, however, from the USSR.

On August 21st 1968, just few minutes after midnight, the numerous army of Warsaw-Pact crossed the Czechoslovakian borders. The Czechs and Slovaks all over the country were woken up by the unusual noise of riding tanks. Thousands of tanks. They said they came to crush down the counter-revolution in the country. They called it a “brotherly help”. How nice of them!!!

The Soviets simply didn’t like the idea of Prague Spring at all. They feared that the pro-democratic reforms which had been introduced in the Czechoslovakia and even more pro-democratic feelings of the broad public could result in weakening of Soviet’s position in the Czechoslovakia, and then maybe in other parts of the Eastern Block. Moscow didn’t want this to happen, of course.

So they intervened and showed the entire world that there is nothing like a sovereign state in the Eastern Block. The Czechoslovak country was being occupied by its savior from the 1945.